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BY TIMOTHY BERNSTEIN

In print | Published March 4, 2010

A couple of days ago, I was chatting with a few of my friends about the upcoming baseball season when, if for no other reason than to see me turn a shade of green, one of them mentioned a potential doomsday scenario for Yankee fans like myself: What if, once the contracts of Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera expire following the 2010 season, the Yankees find themselves unable to re-sign both players, and must instead choose only one? The ultimate “Sophie’s Choice” scenario, played out in free-agency.

It was the kind of question where you feel like you should immediately have an answer: Either the intangibles and leadership Jeter brings to the team trumps the value of any other Yankee, or the inherent magnitude of the closer’s role renders Rivera, with his buzz saw of a cutter the most dominant pitch of a generation, simply too important not to retain. In reality, there isn’t a right answer to that question, which means that there isn’t a wrong one. None of us saw it the same way, taking sides on the basis of various tenets that didn’t allow for much room for debate. The argument lasted a full 10 minutes before we realized that both players would, of course, be re-signed, and we had midterms to take in three days.

Eventually, the question came back to me, but not so much as it related to the Yankees as it could around the league. In my head, I started playing out several of these “Sophie’s Choice” scenarios, in which two of a team’s best players would have simultaneously expiring deals, and the team could only keep one of them. Both of them would have to be tremendously popular with their home bases, both relatively close to each other in age, and both would have to provide enough value to the team that cutting either one of them would leave a huge, gaping hole in the middle of the roster. As Meryl Streep herself was forced to do, I mined the cavernous moral chasm that accompanies the choosing of a lesser of two evils — except this was baseball, completely hypothetical, and my motivation was more about how to fill time than wanting to save my children.

Having put aside the Jeter-Rivera Quandary, I looked over five other cases of prominent MLB duos (three presented in this issue), each immensely valuable to its team. Choosing from each of these pairs the man whom I, were I the one forced to carry out this terrible decision, would allow to leave the team was by no means easy task; emotionally speaking, I have yet to fully recover. Like Mozart upon completion of his “Requiem Mass,” I find myself totally and completely depleted on the heels of these strenuous labors. Having said that, I now give you, ladies and gentlemen, the fruits:

Phillies 2B Chase Utley (31 on Opening Day 2010) vs. 1B Ryan Howard (30)

2007-2009 Performance Comparison:
Utley: .301/.395/.536*, 86 HR, 329 R, 300 RBI, 46.7 UZR**, 23.7 WAR***
Howard: .266/.363/.565, 140 HR, 304 R, 423 RBI, 4.3 UZR, 12.5 WAR

Gun to My Head: As “Sophie’s Choice” scenarios go, this one is about as close to a no-brainer as possible: While Howard has accumulated unrivaled power numbers in recent years and has quietly turned into a solid first baseman, Utley offers the total package in terms of power, average, getting on base, scoring runs, all while providing the best defense at second base in the game by a huge margin.

Another knock against Howard, exposed to brutal effect in last year’s World Series, is his weakness against the breaking ball. No one has seen more breaking balls in the past three years than Ryan Howard, and after watching him flail on sliders from C.C. Sabathia and Andy Pettitte en route to 13 strikeouts and a .174 average, that is unlikely to change anytime soon.

While Phillies fans would be devastated to see either player go, one of the two has been mentioned in possible trade scenarios in an effort to hang on to center fielder Jayson Werth, and it isn’t Utley. If you absolutely had to keep one, the second baseman is the clear choice.

New York Mets SS Jose Reyes (26) vs. 3B David Wright (27)

2006-08 Performance Comparison:
Reyes: .292/.355/.461, 47 HR, 354 R, 206 RBI, 10.3 UZR, 11.7 WAR
Wright: .312/.396/.537, 89 HR, 324 R, 347 RBI, -1.1 UZR, 20.4 WAR

Gun To My Head: Just like any argument involving Derek Jeter, this is one where intangibles have to enter the debate. In that respect, advantage Reyes. As much as the Mets missed his offense and speed at the top of the lineup in 2009 (though not so much, apparently, that they’re not entertaining the idiotic notion of batting him third this year) when he missed four months with a calf injury, Reyes’s boundless enthusiasm had made him the Mets’ most prominent clubhouse presence from 2006-8, and the team missed that as much as any measurable value Reyes brought to the table. However, there have been those in the Mets organization who have become frustrated with what they perceive as a reluctance on Reyes’s part to move away from the “theatrics” — such as the post home-run dances he would often lead — and focus more on improving as a player. While this is all part of the Enthusiasm Factor that Reyes offers, it also implies that the Mets should become Wright’s team going forward, and seek to emulate the third baseman both in his on-field focus as well as his handling of the media. Wright saw his power number drop precipitously in 2009 to the point where the season seemed aberrational enough to be discounted entirely, which is why I looked at the 2006 – 2008 performance for both players. In addition to being the team’s de facto leader, Wright has outperformed Reyes offensively, and although Reyes has proved himself to the superior defender, does not close the overall gap in value to the point where he should be prioritized over his fellow infielder. The 2010 Mets will be lead by David Wright, and it should stay that way, even at the (completely hypothetical) cost of Jose Reyes.

Boston Red Sox 1B Kevin Youkilis (31) vs. 2B Dustin Pedroia (26)

2007-2009 Performance Comparison:
Youkilis: .302/.397/.523, 72 HR, 275 R, 292 RBI, 16.8 UZR (at 1B), 15.3 WAR
Pedroia: .313/.375/.462, 40 HR, 319 R, 205 RBI, 23.9 UZR, 15.7 WAR

Gun to My Head: This was the toughest call, even more so than Jeter/Rivera. A phenomenal case can be made for either of them as both the “soul” of the Red Sox as well as the team’s best player. Pedroia has hit for a higher average, scored a ton of runs, played excellent defense at second base, and goes into 2010 as the best player at that position not named Utley.

He is also five years younger than Youkilis, and guarantees Boston elite performance at that position for a long time. However, in the three full seasons he has played, his performance has seen its share of peaks and valleys; there was the horrendous start to his rookie season in ’07 (from which he rebounded to win Rookie of the Year honors) and while his MVP 2008 was obviously not sustainable, the drop-off in 2009 was a little steeper than some may have liked (as a Yankee fan, I happened to be fine with it, but that’s just me). Youkilis, for his part, has lived up to his advance billing as an on-base force since he joined the team (his nickname in the minor leagues was “Greek God of Walks,” but has added a power component to his game that no one saw coming. In a Boston lineup that may be lacking in firepower, Youkilis provides middle-of-the-order stability and, should Boston elect to trade for a big bat a la Adrian Gonzalez, his defensive versatility (he plays third base nearly as well as first) makes such a move viable without the team having to pay a price defensively. With both players under contract through at least 2013, this move might actually have to involve a gun to go through, but if doomsday were to somehow strike … Youkilis has to be saved.

*A typical “batting line,” where the first number is batting average, the second on-base percentage, and the third slugging percentage

• UZR=Ultimate Zone Rating, a defensive statistic that determines how many more runs a player on defense has prevented than the average player at that position.
  ***WAR=Wins Above Replacement, a statistic that attempts to calculate a player’s total value to his team in terms of how many wins he personally adds to their total.

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